Municipalities Are Forced to Send Employees Home Due to Pandemic
The Provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs is trying to support struggling municipalities during COVID-19
As COVID-19 forces municipalities like Surrey, Langley, and Richmond to lay off some of their workers, B.C.’s Minister of Municipal Affairs is pushing all municipalities to get back on track.
Minister Selina Robinson spoke on April 16 about giving municipalities another year to pay their tax debt.
The plan will also allow local governments to borrow some interest-free cash from their existing reserves in order to pay for their expenses.
Most of the employees who have been laid off worked in recreation centres, ice arenas, cultural facilities, and libraries. Surrey has already sent home more than 2,000 employees and laid off 600 part-time and auxiliary staff. About 140 regular staff members have also been temporarily laid off by Surrey Libraries.
“The City of Surrey is providing 28 days of pay continuity for part-time and auxiliary staff and 42 days of pay continuity for regular staff that have been temporarily laid off,” wrote Joey Brar, Director of Human Resources from the City of Surrey in an email to The Runner.
The City of Langley has also let go of some of its Township workers, including 38 regular employees and about 340 auxiliary, on-call, and seasonal employees.
The city partnered with CUPE Local 403 using a Workforce Adjustment Agreement which will give employees notice and support if they get laid-off.
The City of Richmond has around 400 part-time and auxiliary staff. Clay Adams, Director of Corporate Communications and Marketing for the City of Richmond, says most of these employees work during the summer season. Due to the pandemic, less workers have been hired.
“We haven’t necessarily laid off positions or laid people off as others have done, but we certainly didn’t bring in the number of staff we would normally have expected had it not been for the pandemic,” says Adams.
Other full-time workers like librarians and customer service individuals who work in community centres in Richmond have been sent home without pay.
“We have tried to redeploy staff where we can,” says Adams. “In some cases, there are situations where we take some staff and we deploy them into some other role.”
He says that individuals who work in the areas of payments, bylaw enforcement, and communication will remain on the job.
